Fowler Software Design
Fowler Software Design was founded in 1984, "employs" 29 people and earns $1M a year. For employees and partners, see FSD_People. See also PIGGIPOD. Financial situation * The company seems to face important financial problems as it posted ads throughout October and November to lease 575 sq ft , 1903 sq ft and 4485 sq ft at their location. * A report indicates $2M annually. There is no way to verify the data in the report as it was self-reported by each company. * Press releases touting Fowler Software were put on spam press release sites until January 1, 2010. Team Member Information Letter The document below was provided by an anonymous source. Here is a summary of its content, made out of quotes: * FSD is unusual in many respects. For example, we have no employees. Every team member starts as a Contractor. When it is mutually beneficial, Contractors are accepted as part owners members of the company. * within FSD : (1) Part-time Contractor, (2) Full-time Contractor, (3) Member. A starting part-time contractor might earn $30 per hour after FSD bills $70 per hour to the client. * Members of FSD LLC build up equity in FSD LLC over the years they are members through a “Business Investment Fund” established inside the company. Five percent of any authorized member distribution is contributed to the Business Investment Fund (BIF) while the remaining 95% becomes the actual distribution to the member. * The Technical Division (Tech Div) is organized into Practices. A practice is a collection of FSD clients. Project Leaders work for Practice Managers. Each Project Leader (PL) heads a client project. Techs work for Project Leaders. * Techs get a percentage of their own Value of Service Delivered (VSD). Project Leaders get normal Tech compensation plus another percentage of all of the VSD for their project. Practice Managers get normal Tech compensation plus another percentage of all of the VSD for their practice. Practice Managers often lead their own projects and therefore earn the PL percent in addition to the PM percent. * Our very best member personally earned over $150,000 in calendar 2004. This included his BIF return on investment. He received substantial return on the money he has invested into the FSD Business Investment Fund over the years. * The management technology of L. Ron Hubbard is used at FSD because we have found that it works and helps us be more prosperous as a company. * FSD is managed using production statistics. A production statistic is a metric that measures production. Rising (up) stats are good. Falling (down) stats are bad. * Our turnover is very low indeed. Competent Techs join the FSD team, they are well rewarded, and they stay for years and years. * We are friendly. Dear Prospective Team Member: Thank you for sending your resume to Fowler Software Design LLC (FSD). We reviewed your resume and are interested in talking to you further about the possibility of your joining the team as an FSD Tech (designer/programmer). The next step is for you to read this Information Letter and decide if you are interested in pursuing this opportunity. Introduction FSD is unusual in many respects. For example, we have no employees. Every team member starts as a Contractor. When it is mutually beneficial, Contractors are accepted as part owners of the company. Many who read this information letter will decide that there is not a match. If you do not see a strong match, please discard this letter. We wish you prosperity and success. Some candidates recognize the unique opportunity here at FSD and feel strongly about taking the next step toward joining the FSD team. If you find yourself in this category, then we want to hear back from you! Please send us an email containing the text given on the final page of this document. Limited Liability Company Fowler Software Design is a Limited Liability Company (LLC). An LLC has some aspects of a corporation and some aspects of a partnership. Like a partnership, the company is managed by its owners and the owners work in the company. Like a corporation, liability is limited to investment in the company and does not extend to personal assets. The owners of a corporation are called stockholders. The owners of a partnership are called partners. The owners of an LLC are called members. An LLC avoids the double taxation assessed against owners of corporations. (A corporation pays income tax on its profits and then the stockholders pay income tax on dividends received from the corporation.) Instead, as with a partnership, members of an LLC pay income tax on their share of the company’s profit. --- page 2 --- FSD LLC does not pay salaries or wages to its members. All compensation is through weekly member distributions. These are regular distributions of the company’s profit to the members (owners). Most FSD LLC Members are subchapter-S corporations owned by a single individual or by a married couple. Some members are individuals. Member individuals and member companies are responsible for making periodic payments to the IRS and to the State of Colorado as deposits against income tax liabilities. Most member companies accomplish this by treating their owners as employees and by writing payroll checks for net pay after withholding payroll taxes. Members of FSD LLC build up equity in FSD LLC over the years they are members through a “Business Investment Fund” established inside the company. Five percent of any authorized member distribution is contributed to the Business Investment Fund (BIF) while the remaining 95% becomes the actual distribution to the member. After several years of such investing, a member can own a substantial percentage of FSD LLC. Production FSD is in business to give flawless software service to FSD clients. The quality and volume of that service is important to all of us in the company. So members of the FSD team all maintain a very healthy interest in production. We use that term to mean the service we produce for clients. We figure that if we concentrate on high-quality, high-volume production for our clients, remuneration will follow naturally. Statistics FSD is managed using production statistics. A production statistic is a metric that measures production. Tech production for example is measured using Value of Service Delivered (VSD). This is the value of what has actually been delivered to clients as evidenced by the fact that we billed the client for the service delivered. (We only bill the client after valuable service has been delivered.) We bill clients on Friday each week. So we maintain weekly VSD statistics for each Tech. If Joe bills $3000 for the week spread among Joe’s three clients, his VSD statistic (stat) for the week is $3000. The production stat of the Manager of the Technical Division is Total VSD for the week, which of course is total billings to clients for the week. Every FSD staff member is assigned one principal production statistic which he/she and his/her managers can use to evaluate performance. Rising (up) stats are good. Falling (down) stats are bad. We reward up statistics and take corrective action with down statistics. --- page 3 --- Practices The Technical Division (Tech Div) is organized into Practices. A practice is a collection of FSD clients. The Practice Manager (PM) who heads a practice is an FSD Tech who has taken full personal responsibility for ensuring that all clients in his/her practice do get flawless software service that conforms to client expectations. Project Leaders work for Practice Managers. Each Project Leader (PL) heads a client project. Techs work for Project Leaders. Compensation Tech compensation is based on VSD. Techs get a percentage of their own VSD. Project Leaders get normal Tech compensation plus another percentage of all of the VSD for their project. Practice Managers get normal Tech compensation plus another percentage of all of the VSD for their practice. Practice Managers often lead their own projects and therefore earn the PL percent in addition to the PM percent. Our very best PM personally earned over $150,000 in calendar 2004 due to the combination of his own Tech, PL, and PM compensations. This included his BIF return on investment. He received substantial return on the money he has invested into the FSD Business Investment Fund over the years. In contrast the few Techs who are still hanging on getting corrected by others and hoping to do better in the new year, received low compensation because they had low production. FSD Techs and FSD office personnel are paid on Friday each week based on production for the week ending midnight Thursday. Professional Hours FSD has a strict policy that we bill only professional hours to clients. We don’t charge clients for time Techs require in order to improve their skills to a professional level. We don’t charge clients for promotional hours. We are pretty conservative about this, always giving the client the benefit of any doubt. Billing Rates We establish billing rates so as to give best value to the client. If Joe gets the job done usually in half the time it takes Sam to do the same job, then Joe’s rate to the client should be about twice Sam’s rate. If you have experience with this already, you know that this can vary wildly. A very talented Tech can attack a problem and have a high-quality solution in place in three hours. A less experienced Tech might struggle for two days before finally giving acceptable service. A novice wouldn’t be able to do the job at all without help. So really, our rate schedule ought to be even more exaggerated than it is. --- page 4 --- Our best Practice Managers are able to charge clients $120 to $150 per hour because their time is worth those rates. On longer-term contracts, the same PM that charges $120/hour on short-term work can charge $90/hour to his best client. Less experienced Techs might charge $60/hour to the client. Or, if we don’t have experience with the Tech and we are not yet confident that quality will be up to the FSD standard, we may insist that the client be charged $25 or $30 per hour until the Tech proves himself/herself. FSD History FSD has been in business since May of 1984. We celebrated our 20th Anniversary with a huge party at the Denver Art Museum. We invited friends, clients, and associates for a feast and seminar. It was great fun. Over that many years we have seen many changes in technology. We started out delivering software service using DIBOL on DEC machines. We did COBOL and C programming. We did some FORTRAN programming on a few projects. We started using FoxPro when it was still running on DOS machines and we followed FoxPro through its acquisition by Microsoft to it’s current incarnation as Visual FoxPro (VFP) 9.0. We are the biggest FoxPro shop in Colorado and still service many clients using various versions of VFP. We picked up C++ in its earliest days. I remember running to the bookstore to purchase each new C++ book as it was published. I had the full library and I read each book eagerly. We did a number of C++ projects for clients. Of course we delivered excellent service. We stayed and worked on the software until we could call the service excellent. Sometimes we would work for days and only bill an hour or two. I became disenchanted with C++. There were too many tricks and traps in the language. It was too hard to train new programmers to a professional level with C++. We found a superb replacement in the Eiffel language. Eiffel is far more cleanly object-oriented than C++, is easier to read and to learn, is more efficient, and has better quality assurance checks built in. Our Eiffel projects have made better business sense than our C++ projects because it has required less effort to produce the needed FSD level of quality. We also have many Visual Basic projects going. And we have done a lot of web programming for clients. Recently we have done some good .NET programming including some work using C#. Our turnover is very low indeed. Competent Techs join the FSD team, they are well rewarded, and they stay for years and years. Also, it’s not a boring job. Our clients also stay with us for years and years, so we do have some older technologies in place, but we bring on new clients and new technologies all the time. --- page 5 --- Fun Group Techs and office staff stay at FSD because it is a very fun group. The Techs help each other with the many technologies we have to master for our client projects. The office staff helps Techs to queue up new work and to coordinate schedules. We are friendly. We’re enthusiastic about the value we are able to bring to our client companies. You will really enjoy working with the fine people at Fowler Software Design! Management Technology FSD uses the management technology of L. Ron Hubbard. This technology involves principals of organization and its operation, including the handling of personnel, finance, promotion, production, planning and organizational correction, among other things. As an example, the organizational chart which is in use at FSD is part of the management technology. Each person in the company has a production statistic. The production statistic is a measure of how much the person produced during the week. Each statistic is marked on a graph which is hung on the wall. These graphs show what areas of the company are doing well and what areas need extra attention from management. The management technology of L. Ron Hubbard is used at FSD because we have found that it works and helps us be more prosperous as a company. See the books, “Organization Executive Course” and “Management Series”, which we keep in the FSD library. Contractors and Members Since FSD doesn’t have any employees, the gradient scale used to bring new Techs into FSD does not include hiring a Tech as an employee. Instead the gradient is: (1) Part-time Contractor --> (2) Full-time Contractor --> (3) Member When a new Tech prospect gives us a resume, we look over the resume and call references. We send a copy of this information letter to the prospective Tech so the Tech can decide if there is an attitude match between the Tech and FSD. If we are in agreement at that point, the prospective Tech is invited into the FSD office for an interview. If the interview goes well, we invite the prospective Tech to take a series of personnel tests that give more information to make a decision from the FSD side. If the test results are excellent, we bring the Tech on as a part-time contractor. We will go out and find work for the new Tech and try hard to fill up the Tech’s schedule. Of course the best Techs will get loaded with work because quality delivery is the most effective promotional action for a Tech. When the Tech has proven himself/herself as a part-time contractor, we move to full-time status. The office now schedules all of the Tech’s time and the Tech is expected to do all work as scheduled. --- page 6 --- Three months after a Tech starts as a full-time contractor, we do an intensive review. If we all agree to move to the next step, the Tech is invited to apply to become a Member of the LLC. Once approved by the CEO and by the seven-person Member’s Council, the Tech or the Tech’s own company becomes a Member and is thereafter compensated like a partner. Company policy includes compensating Member Techs at higher compensation rates than full-time contractors. We also try to compensate full-time contractors at higher rates than part-time contractors. A starting part-time contractor might earn $30 per hour after FSD bills $70 per hour to the client. Decision Thank you for reading this entire Information Letter! We hope you are more familiar with FSD now and that you have enough information to make a decision on whether to continue to pursue the opportunity. If you have any questions, please email our human resources manager Laura Ryan at lryan@fowlersoftware.com and Laura will answer as soon as she can. If you have made the decision to move to the next step with FSD, please send Laura Ryan an email with the following statement included in the body of the email: I have read the FSD Tech information letter. I think there may be a good match between my way of doing business and the way FSD does business. I would like to come in for an interview in order to further explore this opportunity. We look forward to hearing from you! Very truly yours, Rex Fowler and Laura Ryan Rex Fowler Laura Ryan CEO, Fowler Software Design LLC HR Manager, Fowler Software Design LLC | }} WISE company Fowler Software is a WISE (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises) business: * WISE 2004 Directory * WISE 2001 Directory *WISE 1999 Directory }} The purpose of WISE, as per incorporation papers: }} Recent discrimination cases involving Scientology businesses enforcing Scientology teachings in the workplace: * The Chicago office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v James L. Orrington * Godelman and Le Shay v Diskeeper * Alabama Woman sues over forced Scientology training at work * Woman sues former employer for religious discrimination / Plaintiff claims she was fired for refusing to convert to Scientology * EEOC: Employees illegally fired }} An older case (2004) with interesting documents: Measurable Solutions More information available at the Scientology Critical Information Directory, WISE Scientology's Extortion Racket or WISE Larry Brennan Unveils the Genesis of Fraud. Misuse of an "investment fund"? * Allegations emerged concerning an internal "investment fund", paid for by the people working at Fowler Software. The stated intent of this fund was to cover risks of malpractice, however these funds may have been used to pay for Scientology courses for Janet and William Fowler. * The following was posted anonymously: }} * In the Letter mentioned above, a "Business Investment Fund" is mentioned. It might be the fund other sources referred to. * So this BIF applies only for members of the LLC ("partners") and not the contractors. It is a way to generate the "capital" of the company. Technicians receives a fraction (total around 50%, it seems) of the amount billed to the clients, the rest remains with the company, e.g. to pay overheads , the managers above the technicians and the partners. Articles of Incorporation 1999: 1986:: http://www.sos.state.co.us/biz/ViewImage.do?masterFileId=19961086254&fileId=19961086254 = References = Category:Fowler Software murder Category:Copied from Chanology Wiki